Hikari set her practice armor's waterlogged breastplate on the only remaining available rock and tried to ignore both of the conflicting urges nagging at the back of her brain. In the first place, it was actually more likely that her mother's bedtime stories were true than it was that some reality show would be able to fake the Earth in the sky, so there was no point checking for hidden cameras, and the second, ogling the soap-opera-grade-hunk was not the first impression she wanted to make on Gaea.
Eventually, after she was about halfway through establishing what had been ruined and what had been saved, he saved her from having to find a way to open the conversation by ending the awkward silence and asking, "Is your name Salazar or Kanzaki?"
The textbook weighed five kilos dry and fifteen wet, but it had been clear the moment she pulled it out that the thing was a total loss, so the way she dropped it on the muddy grass wasn't really a problem. "What?!" she yelped. "How...?"
"Your eyes," he told her. "There have been portraits done of the Seeress of the Mystic Moon, and they're very consistent about the shade they assign to hers. Combined with your attire and obvious Draconian blood, and it seems that the rumors of a personal attachment between Lady Hitomi and King Van were based on substance."
Strange clothes plus green eye plus red eye equals... and just from that he was able to guess? This guy was as sharp as he was hot. "Kanzaki Hikari, pleased to meet you. That's a heck of a guess, by the way."
"And I," he bowed slightly. "am Varen Reshida de Fanel. It's a talent of mine; also, in this case, a matter of wishful thinking. Having the rightful queen of Fanelia take up her crown would greatly simplify my own life."
She blinked, then paled. That moment, those words, made her mother's stories, her heritage, suddenly real to her in a way that even the shock of the frigid river and the Earth hanging so blue in the sky hadn't managed. First came the echoes of a dozen different legends - the heady realization that her life was becoming one of those fairy-tale adventures that every child dreamed of at least once... and hard on its heels, the memories of what the real history behind those same tales had cost on Earth. Blood, death, sacked cities, scorched earth... civil war, the very worst sort.
Then the most personal part of the news pentrated. "King Van..." her father, "...is dead?"
"These two years gone by," he told her.
Two years? That would have been about the same time as... "Mama..." she whispered.
Something in her chest tied itself in a knot, and she had to close her eyes as they burned hot and it became hard to breathe for a while. When she had shaken the memories and broken hope off and regained her composure, she opened them and saw him watching her with a concerned expression that he wiped away as soon as he saw her looking. "If it helps... he passed peacefully," he offered after a moment. "In his sleep."
"Mama always said she thought that they were connected..."
Varen had opened his mouth to reply when the sound of snapping brush drifted across the river, clear and sharp even over the chuckling and slosh of the rapids just downriver from the ford. When they turned to look they saw the dragon wading into the water directly across from them. It raised its head and scented, nostrils flaring, and the native Gaean spoke, calmly, just loud enough for Hikari to hear him herself. "Oh," he said, "shit."
"What?" she asked, no louder.
"It's downwind of us."
It took a moment for her to figure it out, and then she felt her blood try and freeze. "What do we do?" There was no shame in letting him take the lead; he was the one who lived here, he almost certainly knew more about dragons than she did. Besides, she was a girl - she was allowed to ignore that sort of macho pride thing if she chose to.
"Hope it isn't hungry?" he quipped.
And then the dragon screamed like a cross between a jet engine and a lion eating a steam whistle and charged across the river at them, and there was no more time for talk.
He went one direction, she went the other, and the monster barreled past where they had been crouching and through a stand of saplings that scattered before it like so many broken toothpicks. Hikari heard a distinct rending crack as one clawed, scaley foot came down squarely on the breastplate of what had been a hundred-thousand-yen piece of a martial arts gear. She spared a mental wince, the turned her attention to figuring out how to duck around the monster and get at the crossbow; she was closer to it, since Varen had gone along the back rather than back in among the trees.
Varen threw a stick at the thing's eye and shouted something that, if she'd had time to think about it, would have made her mind jump a track - by its failure to translate neatly into either of the languages she had realized she spoke. That didn't mean that she didn't understand it, of course, just that the fact that it was as new as it was obscene made her realize she'd been speaking and understanding a language she'd never heard before in her life.
Then, quite sensibly given how annoyed the thing looked, he turned and ran. She wasted a second blinking after their departing figures, then grabbed the crossbow, along with its parephenalia, and chased after. After all, she didn't really know how to use the thing, and stopping something that size would take real skill.
*****
The sword wasn't dry yet, but that shouldn't matter. Moving quickly, as it would have to in a cut, there wouldn't be time for the glue to catch.
Surviving its attempt to fry him, on the other hand, was a rather more troublesome problem. Without a shield or something to hide behind, his only hope was to somehow get out of the way of the blast.
He wasn't hopeful.
Fortunately, there was something he'd missed. He heard his cousin's voice shout something in a melodic language he didn't recognize, and then the dragon screamed in pain and his eardrums just about exploded. With the crossbow bolt in its eye distracting it from its previous intention - frying him to a crisp - the blast of flaming phosphates and hydrocarbons went wide, scattering and spraying into the air overhead. He still ended up diving out of the way, so as to get out from under the falling sparks, but that was only difficult, rather than outright impossible.
He hit the ground and tried to come upright, but had to turn the momentum driving the motion into a quick roll to one side to get out of the way as its tail came down to balance its change of direction back towards the way it had come - and the girl who had turned one of its eye sockets into a leaking blue-green ruin.
===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"
Eventually, after she was about halfway through establishing what had been ruined and what had been saved, he saved her from having to find a way to open the conversation by ending the awkward silence and asking, "Is your name Salazar or Kanzaki?"
The textbook weighed five kilos dry and fifteen wet, but it had been clear the moment she pulled it out that the thing was a total loss, so the way she dropped it on the muddy grass wasn't really a problem. "What?!" she yelped. "How...?"
"Your eyes," he told her. "There have been portraits done of the Seeress of the Mystic Moon, and they're very consistent about the shade they assign to hers. Combined with your attire and obvious Draconian blood, and it seems that the rumors of a personal attachment between Lady Hitomi and King Van were based on substance."
Strange clothes plus green eye plus red eye equals... and just from that he was able to guess? This guy was as sharp as he was hot. "Kanzaki Hikari, pleased to meet you. That's a heck of a guess, by the way."
"And I," he bowed slightly. "am Varen Reshida de Fanel. It's a talent of mine; also, in this case, a matter of wishful thinking. Having the rightful queen of Fanelia take up her crown would greatly simplify my own life."
She blinked, then paled. That moment, those words, made her mother's stories, her heritage, suddenly real to her in a way that even the shock of the frigid river and the Earth hanging so blue in the sky hadn't managed. First came the echoes of a dozen different legends - the heady realization that her life was becoming one of those fairy-tale adventures that every child dreamed of at least once... and hard on its heels, the memories of what the real history behind those same tales had cost on Earth. Blood, death, sacked cities, scorched earth... civil war, the very worst sort.
Then the most personal part of the news pentrated. "King Van..." her father, "...is dead?"
"These two years gone by," he told her.
Two years? That would have been about the same time as... "Mama..." she whispered.
Something in her chest tied itself in a knot, and she had to close her eyes as they burned hot and it became hard to breathe for a while. When she had shaken the memories and broken hope off and regained her composure, she opened them and saw him watching her with a concerned expression that he wiped away as soon as he saw her looking. "If it helps... he passed peacefully," he offered after a moment. "In his sleep."
"Mama always said she thought that they were connected..."
Varen had opened his mouth to reply when the sound of snapping brush drifted across the river, clear and sharp even over the chuckling and slosh of the rapids just downriver from the ford. When they turned to look they saw the dragon wading into the water directly across from them. It raised its head and scented, nostrils flaring, and the native Gaean spoke, calmly, just loud enough for Hikari to hear him herself. "Oh," he said, "shit."
"What?" she asked, no louder.
"It's downwind of us."
It took a moment for her to figure it out, and then she felt her blood try and freeze. "What do we do?" There was no shame in letting him take the lead; he was the one who lived here, he almost certainly knew more about dragons than she did. Besides, she was a girl - she was allowed to ignore that sort of macho pride thing if she chose to.
"Hope it isn't hungry?" he quipped.
And then the dragon screamed like a cross between a jet engine and a lion eating a steam whistle and charged across the river at them, and there was no more time for talk.
He went one direction, she went the other, and the monster barreled past where they had been crouching and through a stand of saplings that scattered before it like so many broken toothpicks. Hikari heard a distinct rending crack as one clawed, scaley foot came down squarely on the breastplate of what had been a hundred-thousand-yen piece of a martial arts gear. She spared a mental wince, the turned her attention to figuring out how to duck around the monster and get at the crossbow; she was closer to it, since Varen had gone along the back rather than back in among the trees.
Varen threw a stick at the thing's eye and shouted something that, if she'd had time to think about it, would have made her mind jump a track - by its failure to translate neatly into either of the languages she had realized she spoke. That didn't mean that she didn't understand it, of course, just that the fact that it was as new as it was obscene made her realize she'd been speaking and understanding a language she'd never heard before in her life.
Then, quite sensibly given how annoyed the thing looked, he turned and ran. She wasted a second blinking after their departing figures, then grabbed the crossbow, along with its parephenalia, and chased after. After all, she didn't really know how to use the thing, and stopping something that size would take real skill.
*****
The sword wasn't dry yet, but that shouldn't matter. Moving quickly, as it would have to in a cut, there wouldn't be time for the glue to catch.
Surviving its attempt to fry him, on the other hand, was a rather more troublesome problem. Without a shield or something to hide behind, his only hope was to somehow get out of the way of the blast.
He wasn't hopeful.
Fortunately, there was something he'd missed. He heard his cousin's voice shout something in a melodic language he didn't recognize, and then the dragon screamed in pain and his eardrums just about exploded. With the crossbow bolt in its eye distracting it from its previous intention - frying him to a crisp - the blast of flaming phosphates and hydrocarbons went wide, scattering and spraying into the air overhead. He still ended up diving out of the way, so as to get out from under the falling sparks, but that was only difficult, rather than outright impossible.
He hit the ground and tried to come upright, but had to turn the momentum driving the motion into a quick roll to one side to get out of the way as its tail came down to balance its change of direction back towards the way it had come - and the girl who had turned one of its eye sockets into a leaking blue-green ruin.
===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"